you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything. i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. president putin signs the bill which includes a ban on americans adopting russian children pledging to improve the lives of all friends within the country. so this is the most amazing gun buying spree of a forseen two weeks after the tragic school shooting in connecticut. flooded by customers barack obama's threat to ban firearms proved to be the best.

also money doesn't buy happiness in the u.k. it's over a fifth of the country's richest people dream of living abroad. and hopes for dialogue in syria. more flexibility from the rebels and their international backers are waiting for concrete diplomatic steps from damascus. news crews recall how they cover the conflict in two thousand and twelve. it is a pleasure to have you with us here on r t today. live with worldwide news from moscow. breaking news for you this hour president putin has signed the bill which includes u.s. citizens adopting a russian children. but the restrictions came about after washington's travel and

financial sanctions against russian officials it alleges are involved in human rights violations let's get some details on this now from our. standing by live for us it's good to see you you're good to the bill finally has become into law now but can you tell us exactly what it's about. earlier the president said he saw no reasons why the bill shouldn't be passed and signed it on the next day after the final draft got into his office now starting from the first of january american citizens suspected of while ations of the rights of russian citizens will be banned from entering russia the bill also introduces financial sanctions and restrictions on n.g.o.s and non commercial organizations with foreign sponsors and also the article which has been talked about the ban for all americans to dart russian children for the past few weeks russian society and even the political elite have been split over the issue of lawmakers has said that the reasons behind this ban

are the so many cases of abuse of russian children after they're adopted by american citizens including some cases of deaths the president himself said that it's not even the cases of abuse but the lack of your proper legal united and pro-american afterwards including heavy jail sentences another issue is that russian officials are often not able to monitor what happens to children after they're adopted and brought to the united states one of the reasons behind so much debate around the ban is also that many people are concerned with the state of orphanages in russia and along with signing this bill the president also release a degree aimed at improving the lives of orphans in the country there you go to certainly there are many people who are already saying this measure is in retaliation to america's sanctions against russian officials can you just take us back for a moment what are the roots of this raul between moscow and washington. well

lawmakers from the beginning have been saying that this is a response to the money needs to act was passed recently by american lawmakers said again it was rational more work for a foreign investment fund he was suspected of money laundering but died in prison before a court could make a decision on his case is seen by many in the west especially united states as a victim of various human rights violations and the act basically gives the green light for sanctioning a russian official suspected in the us of being connected with human rights violations in moscow by many officials it's seen as another russian law similar to the jackson venue which was abolished just recently because it's really not clear on what grounds this black list of names is that is being put together and also we know that some of the names are going to be classified all together. but how do you say you could just cut off their central message thank you. now you former director

of the american adoption congress told us that ultimately tracking how russian children are being treated in america is all but impossible a lot of the cases have gotten very very light sentences for the caretakers whether foerster or adoptive of russian children here in the united states that we certainly have no idea how many children are enduring abuses surviving abuses of all kinds of children that. parents were tortured in some horrendous ways they were sexually abused they were burnt they were starved they were killed. ever any conceivable kind of torture one human being could inflict on another was done to these children so these were the parents that were caught and prosecuted nineteen how many more are there is there is absolutely no way of

knowing the united states has no system of follow up on adoptions once an adoption is finalized the child is considered as if born to that family. watching r.t.e. in america is braced to plunge off the fiscal cliff time ticks away democrats and republicans all over taxes for the rich we hear how the wiring aspects of the deal have long been agreed upon. now gun sales are searching to record levels all across america president obama's pledge to tackle firearms ownership in the wake of the sandy hook school massacre has actually seen the shooting spree develop into a shopping spree for guns nature can spoke to some of the store owners who are ultimately cashing it about two weeks ago actually on this particular war here. they are it's four rows of rows across. with everything going on in politics

right now with the possible ban and everything everyone is flowing in. purchasing right away gun stores all across the u.s. are reporting record sales. just two weeks after the tragic shooting at the elementary school in newtown americans are scrambling to buy the same type of weapon that adam lanza used in the connecticut shooting plus high capacity magazines and a lot of them panic buying trigger it out of fear that the white house is out to ban the weapons but this time the words need to lead to action we we actually i would say you could double or triple in sales it's the best day we've ever had as a business know a r fifteen for this customer all sold out at the store while prices on line have gone through the roof been going for a thousand fifteen hundred eight hundred dollars to twenty five hundred three

thousand dollars even in some cases it's just the most amazing gun buying spree i've ever seen so many gun retailers now quite cynically refer to thieve ministrations ben talk as the obama gun stimulus that's how good it's been for their business so how do you go from a president with a tough gun control agenda to someone gun dealers call the greatest gun salesman in america the manufacturers of semi-automatic rifles were poured that their market has grown thirty percent over the last four years states like north carolina iowa and you have seen a one hundred percent increase in gun sales over the same period in the wake of the tragedy in newtown one of the country's biggest ammunition suppliers said they sold more than three years worth of magazines in just three days. although president obama himself has so far failed to act on his pledge to ban assault weapons his words have certainly provoked action just not the type you may have wanted or

someone they say was against were. doing a great job for us. maybe we should be a third term in order to sell even more weapons many dealers hype up gun apocalypse scenario so the ban don't breed more government over. to start not only to start with. but many of them don't actually see any drastic changes happening any time soon. going to. assault rifles or. high cap magazines. it's kind of most impossible because. it's already circulating. how are you going to get everybody to bring everything back after all and a significant gun control measures and up it in the past ultimately clashed with the second amendment of the constitution and were subsequently scrapped. tilley virginia i'm going to check on and how to prevent more school shootings well

gun enthusiasts in utah say shoot first advocating concealed firearms classes for teachers much more on that story on our website r.t. dot com. for now having a healthy bank balance in britain is no key to happiness more than a fifth of the country's millionaires are considering emigrating in the next two years and this according to the bank lloyds t.s.b. international more on this now in london our correspondent. blame the dismal whereas that's reportedly the overwhelming reason for why one in five british million as a considering upping sticks and leaving the country now those reasons are followed closely by the high rate of crime in the u.k. and anti search. behavior and then another reason why they might want to leave is the high cost of living here in the u.k. and only in fourth place to my why they might might want to leave is the high rate

of personal taxation now where are they going well top of the list of destinations is france it's nearby and it's warmer weather and same goes for spain which is the other place where they're all thinking of flocking to followed by the usa now we didn't manage to track down any millionaires but we hit the streets of london to talk to the ordinary londoners to ask whether they were considering opting sticks and leaving as well and it looks like most of them agree with the millionaires so let's take a listen to what they told us you consider leaving the u.k. . one reason to climb a. second the dark vision. would you consider leaving the u.k. and leaving somewhere else i'm going to do really what are the reasons my wife. my children but also the expense here looks like the middle class professionals are the ones who are actually packing their bags and leaving

a recent report by the home office said that more and more middle class with professionals are actually packing their bags and opting to continue their careers elsewhere and for them the main reason is the high rate of personal taxation so it's the millionaires are the ones that don't like the rain then is the middle class professionals the senior managers the academics the scientists that are actually continuing their careers abroad and a lot of business leaders are saying that if the high rate of personal taxation isn't cut it's going to lead to a brain drain for the u.k. in the future so something that's very worrying for politicians to consider here. watching the t.v. millions of russians of being glued to one of the biggest corruption scandals of friesen times hundreds of millions in stolen assets glamorous girls and a paper trail the fraud lead investigators to a former defense minister all the juicy details in just a few minutes. if

you're from my generation or younger and you were born into the one percent that i have a lot of college debt i sure do you know the deal used to be that you paid a significant amount for education but in turn that gave you a much higher salary later but now the system works in reverse many young americans studied very hard to not make any money at all around nine percent of americans with student loans have defaulted and at least nine but maybe up to eighteen percent are ninety days late with their payments given the situation the people at u.c. berkeley were nice enough to give away a million dollars in scholarships for everyone everyone that's an illegal immigrant yeah that's right if you're born in america then pay to jump the border and enjoy

the red carpet education treatment the people who will be getting the scholarships are mostly the children of illegal immigrants who spent many of their formative years in america and yet i could see the logic that could be hard for them to get an education when the when they aren't citizens but they came into the country illegally it isn't taxpayers jobs to help them but wait berkeley it's a private institution so i guess they can give out the money to whoever they want whenever they want however they want but berkeley management if you're watching this i would really appreciate if you chose some financial mercy to american citizens it isn't like they don't need the help but that's just my opinion.

science technology innovation hall the list i'm elements from around russia we've got the future covered. thanks for joining us here on our to you today on the recent show you in moscow the u.s. is teetering on the fiscal cliff with the president the senate and the house of representatives still no closer to a deal it's just days to go until taxes for americans across the board jump massively at the same time as spending plummets activist and journalist don de bar says it's not the deadlock that bothers him but rather what has already been agreed upon. the real problem in my eyes is not the fact that they can't reach an

agreement but rather that they have reached an agreement on many fundamental things the grievance they have reached is that neither of them are going to advocate to put more money in the hands of working people they have no problem whatsoever removing a trillion dollars or three trillion dollars from the economy and delivering it to the bankers they did that inside of twenty days back in two thousand and eight and again in two thousand and nine with very little discussion. everyone agrees on both sides of the aisle that sums sort of reduction in benefits from social security and medicare is inevitable quote unquote well you know the rest of us don't believe that it's inevitable or even that it's necessary and certainly not the best that it's not desirable yet the agreement between the democrats and republicans on these fundamental issues is in my mind more important than their disagreement that the posturing that they're doing for the media basically to try to blame each other for

the you know going over the so-called cliff for one and a lot of well as economic recovery is held hostage by those talks in washington the public's seen thing in europe's economy. what's getting jobs and so offset by the government puts together a grand austerity plan. coming up in just a few. and a russia has criticized the deep reluctance of syria's key opposition group to make any concessions in the call flick that's already dragged on for nearly two years but foreign minister said he left office expressed hope that a diplomatic solution remains an option. we knew it was a shuttle on the jump we are disappointed with the opposition forces statements that deposing their regime and dismantling all of its institutions is their main goal and that they won't enter into talks with the international community should not be instigating the continuation of this bloodshed so neither should they be setting any preconditions votes. they should instead encourage all the conflicting

science to look for ways to launch political dialogue as you. also said that russia is waiting for concrete diplomatic actions from damascus which has confirmed it is ready for dialogue the u.n. arab league special envoy to syria lakhdar brahimi has already called for the formation of a transitional council the international peace effort comes amid fresh bloodshed which has become rather common in the water and state reporters got as close as they could to bring you the real stories of the violence that's tearing the country apart and that's what we're focusing on today in our series on the events that shaped twenty twelfth. it became fairly apparent after

a massive regional arab spring and in the wake of that the next context of a pro-democracy movement and a revolution or civil war was not what was happening in. the media just. cracking down on people who think what about the guy on top of the politics and diplomacy that are simply too important to ignore. i remember i was a training session of the syrian football team and the coach was very angry with how his players were practice and he was shouting he was swearing from time to time and then i moved my head like just like this and i saw two helicopters flying at very low altitude and firing. and there was a group for rich syrians playing cards life and smoking and living life as usual and just before that me and my colleagues were live in the local t.v. station there was an enormous blast a few blocks away most likely terror attack. people have been killed and what

struck you was the coexistence of those two. realities. most interesting interaction for me with assad happened before and after the interview obviously in that case. i asked him if he's afraid. he said no. no i'm not afraid that's a moment whether you believe the person or not and the only reason you know if he's right or wrong is intuitional i think syria is becoming. iraq it's a country that is totally. and don't surprise anybody and like in the case of for our poll this harm was done to syria with a substantial help of the outsiders on the guise of democratic and.

i do stay with us for morticians of our twenty twelve recalls here for now though it's a deeply touching time in afghanistan but as president karzai insider more about its public reputation than revenue using foreign companies of billions in tax that's coming up. in japan the average height for men is one hundred eighty two centimeters ten centimeters shorter because of that some employers refused to hire me one of them even told me directly that i was too short to deal with the clients could you just already spend three months in this hospital and plans to stay for another four to the coveted seven santa majors to his stature invented by the famed soviet off that . in the nineteen fifties these frames were initially used to treat fractures in deformities by cutting bones and slowly pulling them up. therefore stimulating

tissue regeneration it was out of was able to receive arms and legs and people who thought they were crippled for life decent to the other patients and in many cases their shattered lives in the ingle when professing designed his first brain using bicycle parts sixty years later says invention is increasingly being used to help people who are eager to fracture their legs to become a few centimeters taller than the ultimate goal is still the same fixing somebodies life both literally and figuratively about a third of patients admitted to the result of center now days seeking surgery for medical reasons most of them are men and most are not what you would call vertically challenged professor novikov who operated on many of them says it usually comes down to a man's pride. the first patient to turn to us with a leg linked to me request to meet his fifteen centimeters to still want to surgery

because panos to than him we like to say that we need to break their legs in order to fix their head maybe nothing wrong with them for all for p.d. point of view but there is something psychological that prevents them from living their lives fully being happy and we fix it like lengthening surgeries abound in many countries and even the out there press expensive in russia the entire course costs eleven thousand dollars about one tenth of the similar package in the united states. financial considerations were one of the reasons they brought this washington state native to western siberia his main motive for the surgery had to do with how he fared in the auditors in america advertised as one seventy five i was one sixty seven or one sixty eight in so one eight centimeters would have brought me right to average if i just wanted to be average for women height isn't so important you know i think girl can be short and it's not a big deal i think

a guy is like expected to be taller just before the operation moses mad a russian girl who found he's a regional hide quite endearing yet he still want to have had the surgery adding seven more centimeters to the self-confidence she took told me the whole time you're crazy you're normal you're perfect. so now or so they call you so what a compliment for somebody who's used to falling short of his own expectations. actually drowning us here in our to today i'm rubber sushi and mosque are blown guns and stoled and billions are the ingredients for the most opening corruption scandal to have a most in russia or in years but those following the case have been left

disappointed today after former defense minister anatoly started to cough who was a witness of a good questioning correspondent been picking up the story. this is sort of the un to climax of one of the biggest of the loudest of political and financial scandals in russia's recent history and i showed up to the investigative committee which is right behind me but refused to testify saying that his lawyer is ill and he was not going to say a word without him now we are talking about a major fraudulent scheme which involves a company under the umbrella of the ministry of defense sewing some of the most lucrative defense assets to other companies also affiliated with the ministry of defense in the mouth using money which were embezzled from the government we're talking about the amount of nearly so much money you know million dollars now we also know that some of the closest associates and friends a lot of the former defense minister had been arrested in connection with the case

including woman who is purportedly his girlfriend right now i don't have to do golf is just a witness in the case but there are hints coming from some of the officials which do indicate that he may very well soon be a suspect in this fraudulent scheme. are ridiculous call reporting that the palestinians are mulling over taking israel to the war crimes cool fresh from the u.n. status upgrade of the palestinian authority could challenge its neighbor over hundreds of children being held in detention if you go to the website called you will find all the details. and it's hard to imagine it would be devastating twisters could be useful for anything one business things that can turn them into green and injury again off the top called get over to toast.

so from oscar here afghanistan says it has lost of a seventy million dollars because nato companies operating there are not paying their taxes president karzai accuses foreign businesses of corruption for using their connections to avoid punishment but antiwar activist brian becker believes cazayoux is more concerned about his reputation rather than any issue about reference karzai is caught between a rock and a hard place he owes his very survival i mean in a literal sense to the occupying forces and yet at the same time he realizes that the afghan people deeply resent the foreign occupiers who have been there for more than a decade and so in order to have any credibility especially post two thousand and fourteen the karzai government and his followers must show at least some degree of

nationalist credentials in other words some independence from the occupiers to whom they owe their survival so he's on the horns of a dilemma he cannot really escape i think this allegation against the foreign n.g.o.s for not paying their taxes which is probably true is his attempt to solve his own or save his own reputation for those who deeply resent the foreign occupation the fact of the matter is the occupation of afghanistan like almost all foreign occupation is riddled with corruption by the occupiers and by the elites who are that we sippin of their assistance and does the karzai government really represent the afghan people does it represent working families does it represent the poor farmers i would say absolutely not there's no indication of that whatsoever to the extent that the karzai government is demanding from foreign forces or independent domestic forces any sort of revenue you can you can believe you can guess for sure i would say.